《灵魂触觉·卷二：时间的听觉》

北美仙人掌🌵

《灵魂触觉·卷二：时间的听觉》


文｜北美仙人掌🌵
乙巳深秋 · 加州

当午夜像一口深井慢慢降下，
我听见时间在井壁上摩擦——
细若砂的声响，
一粒一粒，往下坠。

古城的铜钟在远处呼吸；
鲸的歌声穿过寒冷的洋流，
与山脉腹地里悄无声息的年轮
对上了拍。

风吹过空旷的站台，
铁轨的余音像是旧信封里未寄出的气息；
雪落在屋檐，
声音轻到像是不愿惊动任何人的歉意。

灵魂把耳朵贴近大地：
岩层深处的地震波在说话，
草籽破土时发出极小的脆响；
光年外的脉冲星点着节拍，
像宇宙最古老的鼓手，
给万物维持一首看不见的乐曲。

时间并不是走路的人，
它更像一面被轻轻敲响的鼓——
回声在山谷里一圈又一圈地扩散；
等回音抵达你的胸腔，
你才知道，
所谓“过去”，只是声音抵达得慢了一点。

灵魂因此学会了辨别：
潮汐的“来”与“去”，
并非两个字，
而是一口气的起与落；
一封再也写不完的家书，
在夜里被反复朗读，
每一次停顿都把“想念”说得更清楚。

有人把时间装进日历；
我把它装进听觉——
装进雨滴击中石阶的顺序，
装进篝火忽明忽暗的呼吸，
装进你说“没事”的那一瞬轻颤。

哲人说：人之所以为人，
在于他能听见沉默。
沉默并不空白：
它盛满了尚未说出口的未来。
在那些比黑更深的停顿里，
灵魂与世界交换了心跳，
于是希望悄悄改了拍。

当爱靠近，
时间把所有表盘都转向同一个刻度；
火车鸣笛，海潮回身，
婴儿的第一次呼吸
和老人临睡前的叹息
在同一个和弦里汇合。

别问时间往哪儿去——
听：
它从清晨的鸟声开始登高，
在午后茶杯里降为低声部，
于黄昏站在门口提醒归路，
到夜里，把所有灯火
轻轻收进一只贝壳。

这就是灵魂的第二种触觉：
在时间里倾听时间。
它不追赶，不计算，
只把每一道回声妥善安放。
于是疼痛有了位置，
欢喜有了回响，
连遗忘也被赋予了柔软的音色。

当这听觉抵达最静的频率，
诗便从沉默中分离出来——
像薄雾里升起的一节单簧管，
第一声就把夜色吹得更深。
真正的诗，不急于说明：
它只把节拍交还心跳，
把韵脚交给远方的潮声，
让我们在听的过程中被温柔整队，
一步，一步，
与万物同拍。

那一刻，灵魂知道：
所谓永恒，
不是时间的长度，
是听见它的时候，
万物同时点头。




The Tactile Sense of the Soul · Vol. II: The Hearing of Time


By North American Cactus🌵

When midnight lowers like a deep, clear well,
I hear time scrape along its walls—
a sound fine as sand,
falling, grain by grain.

A bronze bell breathes from an old city;
whale-song travels through cold currents
and finds the rhythm hidden
in the ribs of the mountains.

Wind crosses an empty platform.
The rails hold an aftertone,
like breath sealed in an unopened letter;
snow lands on the eaves,
so softly it seems
to apologize for arriving.

The soul presses its ear to earth:
seismic waves speak in the dark,
a seed makes a faint crack as it opens;
far away, a pulsar keeps the beat—
the oldest drummer in the cosmos,
holding a score no eye can see.

Time is not a walking figure;
it is a drum lightly struck—
its echo widening ring by ring.
By the time the echo reaches your chest,
you understand:
what we call “the past”
is simply a sound that arrived late.

So the soul learns to distinguish:
the come and go of tides
are not two words,
but one breath—rise and fall.
A letter that will never be finished
is read aloud at night, again and again,
each pause making “I miss you” clearer.

Some keep time on calendars;
I keep it in the ear—
in the order of rain on stone steps,
in the breathing of a wavering fire,
in the slight tremor
inside your whispered “I’m fine.”

A thinker once said: to be human
is to hear silence.
Silence is not empty:
it brims with the future, still unspoken.
In those rests deeper than dark,
the soul trades heartbeats with the world,
and hope quietly changes key.

When love draws near,
time turns every dial to one mark;
a train calls, the tide returns,
a child’s first breath
and an elder’s sigh before sleep
resolve in the same chord.

Do not ask where time has gone—
listen:
it climbs at dawn on the wings of birds,
drops to a whisper in the afternoon cup,
stands at the doorway at dusk to name the path home,
and at night gathers every light
into the hush of a shell.

This is the soul’s second sense of touch:
to hear time inside of time.
It does not chase or count—
it shelves each echo where it belongs.
Pain finds its place,
joy finds its resonance,
even forgetting receives a tender timbre.

When this hearing reaches the stillest frequency,
poetry separates from silence—
a single clarinet rising in the mist,
deepening the night with its first note.
True poems hurry to explain nothing:
they give the beat back to the heart,
the rhyme to the distant tide,
and let us be arranged, gently, by listening—
step by step,
in time with all things.

In that moment, the soul knows:
eternity is not a length of time.
It is the instant you hear it,
when everything nods at once.